


King Of Times Past

by FinnScathach



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:45:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinnScathach/pseuds/FinnScathach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is the once and future king ... and now it is the future, and he is needed. Merlin has been waiting a very long time and his patience is soon to be rewarded. But how will Arthur adjust to a modern world where knights are the stuff of legends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Merlin has been waiting a long time.

Now, it is raining. It is raining so hard that water comes in sheets off the old tin roof on the shelter by the side of the road, bouncing on the concrete before running down towards overflowing drains, blocked by the last of autumn's leaves. He is drenched despite the roof over his head, and every lorry that passes -- each one ignoring him -- only makes him wetter.

But he has waited a long time and endured worse than a little inclement weather. It is not long now.

Soon, his friend will return.

Yet although that thought is all that is keeping him going, he will not allow himself to dwell upon it. Prophecies are imprecise and he cannot hope...

_If prophecies can take him from me, they can bring him back,_ he thinks stubbornly. Merlin has always been stubborn; age has reduced the effectiveness of a stamping foot or jutting chin, but he still gets his way when he wants it. That is, until he is confronted by an Oyster Card reader or some other new-fangled contraption that cannot easily be circumvented. He is saving his strength for the Return -- wasting his magic on bus drivers would be foolish.

In his mind, he does not call it a Return. He calls it a Reunion, though he knows that sentimentality is not a strength here. He has had many years for his feelings to fester and intensify, but Arthur has not. God willing, it will have been to him but a moment's rest, and he will wonder at the disguise Merlin wears, so similar yet subtly different to the ageing spell he used as Emrys.

_This is no disguise,_ he will say.  _I am old, Arthur, though you are not_.

And his king will ask him why there are no casual magic tricks. No cheating at dice. Why he saves his powers as though he is once more afraid of discovery.

In many ways, he is. Even skirting around the edges of society, Merlin has seen what people do to those who are different, but in truth it is not so much their attention and scorn that he fears so much as the number of people who need his help. He is old and he is weak, and until Arthur returns he fears to use his magic in case there is nothing left.

_Soon_. Arthur will return soon.

Merlin believes they have need of him. In truth, that is more a hope than a certainty. He has seen the homeless and the unemployed; the faithless, the disillusioned, and the anarchic. He has seen the breakdown of families and communities and watched people grow more distant. He has watched as the personal touch is lost and as neighbours are left to starve on the street, and he wonders if a knight can do anything. Is there call for a man trained in the art of war, his skills now antiquated and irrelevant? Is there call for a man born a king when it is the common people who need help?

_They need a leader_ , he thinks, sitting in the shelter by the side of the road. Merlin has watched the rise and fall of hundreds of rulers and politicians and he knows that the people have no faith in the government. They need a ruler they can trust. _They need guidance and decisions that are for them, not for the money_. He hopes that perhaps Arthur would be the one to do that.  _And will this world accept him? Will they take a king of times past to rule times future?_

For this he has no answer, and will not, not until Arthur returns. Merlin knows he must have patience.

Patience is difficult when he has no one with whom to talk. It is many years since he saw Gaius, his mentor, grow old and die. It is many years since he watched Camelot age and fall. It is many years since there was anybody left in the world who believed his magic could help them. Now he walks alone and talks to no one, a misfit in a society that cannot extend to surround him. He eats when he can and subsists on magic when he cannot, and he has grown used to sleeping on a stone floor. It is not so different.

But this rain...

Merlin hates the rain. His clothing is decayed and ruined. He has no money to buy more and no willingness to steal. Every shower leaves him drenched, and the persistent rain that drums on the pavement now has left him so cold that every now and again a shudder runs through his bowed and ancient body, a body that shows very few of the years he has lived. Yet still he feels them all, bearing down on him.

A lorry passes, this one bright blue, and throws up a sheet of water that leaves him sodden and miserable. It is time to move. Merlin gets up, glances once up the road, and waits a moment to ascertain which way he should go.

That is when he feels it.

Not  _soon_. Now. Arthur is returning.

For the first time in centuries, a slight smile crosses Merlin's face, and he sets off up the road.


	2. Chapter 2

When Merlin finds him, he is lost, stumbling at the water's edge, and he is quite naked. The pounding rain hits his bare skin and washes away any dirt that this body has accumulated. Merlin has prepared for that. He takes off his rucksack and unfolds the clothing he has been saving for so long, hurrying to his king's side to place the cloak around his shoulders.

Arthur looks at him blearily. "Merlin," he says, and the old warlock wants to weep, because his friend's voice has not changed at all. "There is no need for a disguise."

He does not realise. Fighting the lump in his throat, Merlin reaches for his long-saved magic and returns his appearance, if not his health, to that of the dark-haired boy who once roamed Camelot. He sees Arthur smile and something twists inside him. "Do you know where we are?" he asks gently.

Arthur frowns and gestures in the direction of the island. "Avalon," he says vaguely, and then seems to focus. "I was dying. They ... they healed me? The  _sidhe_? Or ... you healed me. Did you heal me?"

Merlin blinks back tears. "You  _died_ , Arthur," he says. "And I have waited so long for you to come back."

"People don't come back from dying. You're not making sense, Merlin." He sounds like he used to when Merlin made up some excuse for his absence--determined not to be fooled.

"You did. You're the once and future king. You're here because this world needs you again. It is a broken world, Arthur. They need a king."

He shakes his head. He doesn't understand. "I ... was dead?" he says slowly.

"Mordred killed you..." He remembers dying, but perhaps he does not remember that. What else has he forgotten?

"Yes. I recall it."

"You died. The dragon and I tried to save you, but we were too late. He told me you would come back eventually, so I waited."

Arthur looks around, shivering and tugging on the cloak to pull it more closely around his body. Now he seems to see the road, the buoys, the pylons--signs that this is not the rain-soaked land he knew. "How long?" he asks, his voice little more than a whisper.

"A while." Let this peace last a little longer. Merlin will not break it to him yet.

"How long did you wait?" Arthur insists; a slight hint of fear is apparent in his voice.

Merlin hesitates, unwilling to admit what he hardly believes himself, to put into words something he would rather forget. "Fifteen hundred years, give or take," he says, and he drops the spell that drains his energy to keep him youthful, revealing the old man he has become. He is still too young for the time he has seen.

Arthur steps back and looks at him, really looks at him. "This is not a disguise," he says flatly, and Merlin shakes his head.

"You have not aged, but I have. I'm an old man."

"You waited all this time for me..."

"What else was I to do? That's my destiny. To serve you, whenever and wherever you were."

His king laughs slightly, as though to keep himself from crying. One of his hands is clenched at his side, shaking ever so slightly. "I don't deserve you."

"You're a good king, Arthur. I'm glad to be your servant." But Merlin smile does not last. "The world has changed while you were sleeping."

"While I was dead, you mean," says Arthur, more jovially than Merlin expects from a man who is likely still in shock, and he looks around. It is difficult to make out much beyond their immediate surroundings thanks to the pouring rain and overcast sky, but even so this is not Arthur's Camelot. The island they see was Avalon once, but no longer. Now tourists swarm over it in bright weather, and intrepid hill climbers in the rain, and it is worn with their footprints. It has been photographed a hundred times, a little piece of its fairy soul ripped away with each instantaneous copy.

This is an alien country to the king. "How can you think that these people still need me? I ought to have been long dead." 

"They need any help they can get," Merlin says. Many times he has longed to use his magic to help the people, but something inside has bade him wait until Arthur returns. Even now he will not act without his king. "You were a great king, Arthur."

"Yet you managed to escape my attention for years."

"You did not look to see magic in your servant."

Arthur acknowledges that with a tilt of his head, but it is clear he is still troubled by his lack of perception. "My father never knew, I suppose." A small comfort--there were many things that Uther overlooked, and they were his downfall.

"Not while he lived, no." Merlin recalls the ghost of Uther, staring at him:  _you have magic_. This is the conversation they should have had fifteen hundred years ago, before Arthur died and Merlin wandered to the ends of the earth. This is the conversation that they started, but never finished. 

Perhaps Arthur should have known when his father did. Perhaps he would have been able to stop this.  _Now is not the time for regrets. He has returned, and all will be well again._

Yet this world has been sick for a long time.  _I should have found him sooner_. Even now, when Merlin has lived long enough to know when he can change nothing, he struggles to accept that knowledge.

Arthur looks at him as though he wants to ask a question, but either he thinks better of it or Merlin's ancient eyes are deceiving him, for he shakes his head and looks away. "What do you want me to do?"

It seems odd for Arthur to ask him that when so often he asked the same thing, a servant of his king. "First you need to get dressed," says Merlin. He has served Arthur long enough but even so, to see him clad only in a cloak that is clinging to his skin, soaked by the rain, is slightly disconcerting. "And then I will show you the world."


End file.
